Lavistown House Biomass Heating – Case Study

This makes perfect sense for us because we have our own timber from storm felled trees. There’s a bit of work to it – we spend 2 hours a week splitting logs together and we couldn’t manage without the hydraulic log splitter. There is cost involved in moving and preparing the wood for splitting but overall we are very happy with our choice. We are definitely much cosier than we have ever been in the past. Olivia Goodwillie

Lavistown House in County Kilkenny makes for an unusual log boiler installation because two houses are heated from the same firing by means of two 3000 L buffer tanks. Glas Energy designed and installed the system to include a HDG Euro 50 kW Log Boiler and 2 x 3000L buffer tanks – 1 per household with changeover switch. The boiler is fired once a day during the coldest times and once every other day when the weather is a bit warmer. Three year old dried split logs from the family farm are used; one big wheelbarrow load for each buffer tank. Each firing takes about 15 minutes to light and then three hours to burn fully and heat the water in the tank. At the end of this time the boiler is reloaded onto the embers and the system is manually switched over to the second tank for the second house. The boiler is maintained with weekly ash emptying, occasional cleaning by Roger and annual servicing by a Glas Energy engineer. The fire bricks required changing in Dec 2017 with no disruption to the heat supply.

The installation was very straight forward once we organised the space that was required. There are two households so we share the loading, making it manageable and definitely warmer! This is a carbon neutral choice for us. Roger Goodwillie